Thursday, May 28, 2015

Why A Writer Must Take Notes

I wish I had the habit of keeping a diary or
journal, looking back at each day before going to bed or recording thoughts and
impressions as and when they came — of course, leaving out parts that no one
other than me must know.

No harm retaining the parts the world shouldn’t
know, as long as no one reads your diary or you know how to keep it safe — or if
you have a family that is tolerant of your behaviour. Brutally honest diaries
often make for good, even great, literature; only that they are usually
published — quite naturally — posthumously. One such great work published: The Journals of John Cheever. Must-read.

Coming back to keeping a journal, I think it is
very important for a writer or an aspiring writer to get into the habit for two
reasons. One, the daily introspection keeps alive your ability to synthesise
thoughts into words. Two, the matter you produce each night adds up to being a
goldmine: you can create several masterpieces out of it, fiction or
non-fiction, without having to invent a scene or a situation, because it is all
recorded in the diary — raw.

The idea is to always look and listen, and
instantly note down anything you find intriguing or interesting. For that you always
need to carry a notebook and a pen — something I always ignore unless I am out
for a story.

Recently, while dining at Koshy’s in Bangalore — and I had not gone to Bangalore for a story — I overheard a
conversation between two old-timers which I thought was worth writing about. I
was carrying a pen, but no notebook. So I quickly jotted down the conversation,
before it vanished into thin air, on a paper napkin. Back home, the wife
discovered the napkin in my suitcase and wondered, even though she is past
caring about such things, if it was a love note. I explained to her that the
scribbling was a conversation I had overheard between two old-timers at Koshy’s:
one of them urging the other to keep coming back for dinner so that Koshy’s — the
old Bangalore institution
— remains alive.

Had I carried a notebook, I would have had no
explanations to offer and got far more details to record. Memory, after all, is
slippery and often fails you when you need her the most, but the written word
is like a piece of rock — the more you write down your thoughts and impressions,
the more rock-solid your story is.

That is why V.S. Naipaul is such a rockstar,
especially when it comes to writing about places. The Granta magazine, in an issue devoted to India some years ago, had
an entire chapter devoted to Naipaul: it reproduced the first four pages from
the journal that Naipaul kept when he was visiting India — this was his second
visit to the country of his ancestors — to write India: An Wounded
Civilisation. Each handwritten page is faced by a transcribed version of
the same so that the reader doesn’t have to struggle to decipher his
handwriting, even though Naipaul’s handwriting is pretty legible. What the handwritten
pages prove is that there was very little difference between Naipaul’s notes
and the prose he eventually produced — and how important it is to take copious
notes.

I now wonder if my books would have been richer
if I too had meticulously taken notes while roaming the towns and cities I have
written about. Not that I did not carry a pen and notebook, but the compulsion to
take/make notes always melted away when I found myself in situations worth
writing about. I wanted to live the situations rather than distance myself from
them by taking out my notebook. But there is one way you can not only live your
experiences but also write about them in a distanced manner: by writing a diary/journal
at the end of the day.

Here is what Vinod Mehta (it’s so painful to
prefix ‘late’ to his name) has to say about Naipaul’s style of functioning, in
his autobiography Lucknow Boy: “Vidia
(V.S. Naipaul) never carried a notepad, much less a tape recorder. One hot
afternoon in Lucknow,
after walking through the narrow, filthy lanes of Chowk… we came to our hotel
ravenous and thirsty. Vidia skipped lunch and locked himself in his room to
make ‘notes’. His memory was awesome. He could reproduce long conversations
without getting a word wrong.”

After a long day, a lesser mortal like me would
rather unwind with a drink or go shopping. It is too much of an effort to lock
yourself up in a room and write down all that you encountered in a day. Had I
done that, I would have taken half the time to finish each of my books and they
would have probably read better. Memories are richer when written than
recalled.

From now on I am going to follow Naipaul: make
notes at the end of each day while working on a book. I have already purchased six
new notebooks, all world-class, and four new fountain pens, all sturdy and
India-made, so that I don’t fall short of stationery while visiting the city I
am going to write about next. Just that I shouldn’t feel too lazy to makes
notes. It is laziness, more than anything else, that stands between a genius and could-have-been-genius.

4 comments:

Very useful piece. It is so important for writers to maintain a diary of daily events. I started making notes when I was in college but really didn't take it seriously. How I wish, if I would have done that , I wouldn't have taken five years to finish my first book, and it would have read better perhaps. Now working on my second one, I should start one today itself. I am equally excited about new notebook, a shiny brand new pen ...